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Bathroom. Dry. Silent.
All the rooms were absent Nik.
A slight sense of panic beginning to settle in, Ben darted back to the bedroom. The suitcases, semi-packed for their trip, were still on the floor in the closet. Nikolas's passport was on the dresser.
But more importantly, Ben noticed for the first time, Nik's watch, his phone, and his wallet were there also. They were all laid out in a row, as if saying to anyone who might wish to read this messagehere you are: one, two, three, four. That's me done.
Ben shot back to the large walk-in wardrobe and swept hanging clothes aside.
Nikolas's bergen was gone.
The stillness was now explained.
Whatever Nik was,whoeverhe was on any given day, he was this. It was the core of the man. His essence.
And now it was gone. A heart plucked beating from a body.
Ben began to breathe evenly and deeply. He didn't even know he was doing it until he caught his reflection in the mirror and saw the hypnotic calming of the action.
He was preparing to face the unthinkable—Nikolas had left.
Hehad not answered his phone.Hehad refused to talk, and so Nikolas had sent an effective message to him—there you are then: one, two, three, four. That's me done.
When Ben ruined people’s lives, he destroyed them messily and noisily with cuts and blood, finding God, or fathering Molly—he smashed and broke.
Nikolas merely cast off the things that defined him and slipped silently out into the night.
He'dleft.
More to the point, Ben realised, Nikolas had just lefthim.
Nikolas could have pushed him off a balcony to the unforgiving concrete below and the result would have been the same.
* * *
Chapter 43
Nine Years Ago
It had been a pretty unpleasant couple of months after the fire.
He stayed away from Ben. He told himself this was because he needed to heal. Even Benjamin Rider, endearingly stupid as he was, couldn’t fail to make a connection between a fire and a burnt man. But there was more to his reluctance to meet Ben than risking that connection being made—after all, they could have met and kept their clothes on for once, an obvious fact which rather undermined this burn excuse. Also, he was a liar—he’d lied his way out of one whole life and into another. He was fairly sure he’d have been able to lie his way out of a scorched back and some missing hair.
No, he didn’t want to see Ben because...well, he didn’t want to do just that. See him.
Aleksey knew with a chilling certainly that when he looked into Ben’s eyes again he wouldn’t be thinkingyou fucking bastardabout this situation at all.
Because, of course, avoiding Ben meant he had a lot of time to ponder the man in the cottage and what he meant for both of them.
And the conclusion he had come to was that Benjamin Rider was not heartless at all—he was only putting on that act when he was withhim. Benjamin Rider had in fact been testing the waters with him, too, and had found them icy cold.Sir Nikolas Mikkelsenhad not been willing to take that plunge with him, so Ben had sought another to give him what he wanted. What he needed.
He wondered sometimes, as he lay in his bed on his belly, healing, or as he rode alone on the beach, occasionally catching a faint aftertaste of turpentine from the air, why he had not just waited at the cottage and confronted Ben. After killing Usama Allouni, obviously.
Slowly, if there was time.
He was not afraid of confrontation, after all, and he would have emerged victorious in any conflict that might have occurred—physical or otherwise.
He had learnt at a very young age that men did not expect other males to flick immediately to attack without provocation. Thathecould had proved much to his advantage over the years. And that he had provocation now was beyond doubt. But in what exactly did the offence lie? This he had yet to decide, and that indecision contributed to his avoidance of Ben. Memories flashed like tiny fireflies in the night, a brief, intense evocation of previous hurts, retaliations sharp as the point of a knife: Nikolas stealing a much-contested fossil,hiswrath, the ensuing beating. But other subtler hurts that he'd not battled physically: Nikolas and their mother wrapped in each other's arms, whispering together, excluding him. A depth of love with which he could not compete, could not defeat.
